rabble.ca - analysishttp://rabble.ca/category/new-story-type/analysis
enIt's time to change the way we think about parliaments where no party has a majorityhttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/its-time-change-way-we-think-about-parliaments-where-no-party-has-majority
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/05/its-time-change-way-we-think-about-parliaments-where-no-party-has-majority"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/parliament-865x440.jpg?itok=xxelLkrp" width="1180" height="600" alt="Canadian Parliament. Photo: Sam Szapucki/Flickr" title="Canadian Parliament. Photo: Sam Szapucki/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Smart politicians avoid speculating about what they might do in the case of different possible election outcomes, and for good reason.</p>
<p>When former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff allowed himself to be lured into a bit of speculation during the 2011 campaign, he got into big trouble. During a television interview, the ill-fated former Harvard professor mused that his party might consider entering into a governing coalition arrangement, if the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives failed to win a majority but still had the largest number of seats.</p>
<p>Ignatieff's predecessor, Stéphane Dion, had stubbed his political toe badly, in 2008, when he joined forces with Jack Layton's NDP to propose replacing Stephen Harper's Conservatives with a coalition government, a coalition which would have required the tacit support of Gilles Duceppe's separatist Bloc Québecois.</p>
<p>Although they were short of the magic number of 50 per cent plus one, the governing Conservatives had just increased their seat count in the fall 2008 election. They considered themselves to be the legitimate victors. With some assistance from his friends in the mainstream media, Harper managed to convince a good many Canadians that the coalition idea was a case of the losers illicitly trying to snatch victory from the winners.</p>
<p>Three years and another campaign later, when new Liberal leader Ignatieff mentioned the "c" word he brought back a lot of bad memories. He ended up presiding over the worst defeat in his party's history.</p>
<p>The lesson learned for all political leaders is that they would be wise to leave the forecasting and hypothesizing to the pundits. Their one and only job is to focus on convincing as many voters as possible that their party is the best choice.</p>
<p>Not too long ago, however, Green party leader Elizabeth May decided to throw caution to the winds and defy the taboo against speculation.</p>
<p>In a media interview, May openly mused about what could happen should Andrew Scheer's Conservatives win the most seats in the October 2019 election, but fall short of a majority. In such a case, the Green leader's advice to the current prime minister would be that he should hang on to power and govern from second place position.</p>
<p>May said she and her party would be prepared to support a Liberal minority government in such a situation. The Greens cannot envisage ever supporting Andrew Scheer, given his and his party's stance on global warming, which varies from blithe indifference to something approaching denial.</p>
<p><strong>Are Canadians too risk averse?</strong></p>
<p>May's hypothetical suggestion is perfectly reasonable and well within parliamentary tradition. In crass political terms, however, it might be awkward. </p>
<p>For one thing, May is admitting that, for her, the two largest, old line parties are not Tweedledee and Tweedledum. She is saying that while the Liberal record on the environment is wanting, Trudeau's party would still be a far better option than Scheer's.</p>
<p>The message a good many voters could take from May -- given our first-past-the-post electoral system -- is that they should not vote for a smaller party such as the Greens, but should support the Liberals to block those perfectly odious Conservatives.</p>
<p>May's words might also have others harkening back to the bitter controversies over coalitions of the not-too-distant past. In that light, they might consider May's hypothetical Liberal second-place minority government to be an invitation to political chaos.</p>
<p>Canadians are not <em>ideologically</em> conservative, on the whole. A majority of Canadians support a robust welfare state, justice for Indigenous peoples and at least the goal of doing something about global warming.</p>
<p>However, when it comes to innovations in and novel ideas for the political <em>process,</em> Canadians are highly risk averse. Witness the multiple failures of recent attempts to change the voting system. Australians and New Zealanders tinker with their electoral systems with alacrity, almost as often as some of us change suits. They do not fear change in the way they elect their parliaments. That is not so for us cautious, stand-pat Canadians.</p>
<p>Given our cautious nature, the very notion of governing from second place, either as part of a coalition or as a minority, will seem bizarre and aberrant to a great many Canadians.</p>
<p>You have to go back to the First World War to find the only federal coalition government we ever had in Canada. That was Robert Borden's Unionist administration, in which the Conservatives joined forces with a breakaway group of pro-war Liberal MPs.</p>
<p>And the only time a federal party leader ever tried to govern from second place was in 1925. Liberal prime minister MacKenzie King had emerged from an election with fewer seats than the Conservatives, but hung on to power, with the not-so-certain support of the Progressives.</p>
<p>King's minority ushered in a period of instability and a constitutional crisis known as the King-Byng affair (Lord Byng was the governor general). The whole mess was only resolved by another election.</p>
<p><strong>We should get used to the idea of a hung parliament</strong></p>
<p>Despite the not-so-salutary example from the 1920s, constitutionally, and based on precedent and tradition, there is nothing aberrant in our parliamentary system about a second-place party running the government. Such is the current situation in British Columbia, where Premier John Horgan's New Democrats have fewer seats than the Liberals, and it was the case in Ontario from 1985 to 1987. During that period, David Peterson's Liberals successfully governed as a minority, even though the Conservatives held the largest block of seats in the legislature.</p>
<p>But if folks such as Elizabeth May think a second-place government could turn out to be the best option for Canada after this October's federal election, they will have to start working on public opinion now.</p>
<p>Canadians, including those in the news media, do not always understand that when we hold an election we are electing not a government but a Parliament. A party only gets the right to govern when it can demonstrate it has the confidence of Parliament.</p>
<p>If, after the next vote, second-place finisher Trudeau believed he had a good chance of gaining the confidence of a majority of MPs, then he should try his luck in Parliament. There would be nothing illegitimate or illicit about that.</p>
<p>Indeed, there is a longstanding convention that, following an election, a sitting prime minister has first crack at testing the confidence of the House of Commons. If he or she is voted down then the Governor General can call on another leader to give it a try, or trigger another election.</p>
<p>When no party wins a majority in an election, we in Canada tend to say, erroneously, that the party which came in first "won a minority." That is not true. A minority government only takes shape once all the elected members of Parliament have spoken, collectively.</p>
<p>The British use a better phrase for an outcome that does not give any party more than half the seats: a hung parliament. It might be a good idea if we in Canada adopted the same language.</p>
<p>On election night in October, if Scheer's party were to take the largest block of seats, but not more than half, commentators and journalists would be well advised to describe the result as uncertain and undecided, rather than prematurely anointing the Conservative leader as head of a new minority government.</p>
<p>It will be up to the elected members of Parliament, and not media commentators, to decide who gets to be prime minister.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chelsea_nj/9649044204/in/photolist-fGDSF7-qnZ7fy-cdpD5s-sVcyQ-wqu3h-9YNRS4-cQfTZQ-H1G9U2-9YNTLB-98CYMg-fiN2Rj-wUpC1-5tyyfS-5ib33J-UEnUqC-PycddK-6a5fCa-2egsu6J-BhU3X-8fn589-9YJwD5-2ft5if-9YRKYq-25gSx1y-aCv5sm-e9b74-5fzRUL-9YREV9-2dYvpLt-foQxCD-wUpCq-9YNV5B-7ey23y-oNRWef-UyKPPY-guaebs-9R6hoz-dbKSvW-id9KHn-2SC7zh-5oTKGw-bobMHa-9YFw4t-Wfviwv-bk2W22-9YFBhk-8SiAdC-odoLrn-mh4nn2-2cgvFu5" target="_blank">Sam Szapucki/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Thu, 23 May 2019 18:59:40 +0000rabble staff161416 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/its-time-change-way-we-think-about-parliaments-where-no-party-has-majority#commentsCrime expert says better social programs, not more prisons, will reduce violencehttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/crime-expert-says-better-social-programs-not-more-prisons-will-reduce-violence
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/05/crime-expert-says-better-social-programs-not-more-prisons-will-reduce-violence"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/Prison-865x400.jpg?itok=Pt-2-Lqj" width="1180" height="600" alt="Prison. Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr" title="Prison. Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Criminologist Irvin Waller recommends that governments should rely on what he calls "upstream social preventive programs" to deal with crime, rather than the tools of the traditional criminal justice system. That is another way of saying that, to curtail crime, especially violent crime, prevention is more effective than punishment.</p>
<p>Programs aimed at preventing crimes before they happen cost less than incarceration. And there is a massive body of evidence that they engender a significant reduction in the rate of crime.</p>
<p>During the Harper era in Canada, the emphasis was entirely on the wrong approach, on toughening the penal system. The Conservatives made prisons harsher and less focused on rehabilitation -- they cut the prison farms program, for instance -- and mandated a series of gratuitous minimum sentences, limiting the discretion of judges to treat each case on its own merits.</p>
<p>The Trudeau Liberals have taken a different tack. They restored the prison farm program. But we in Canada still have a long way to go if we are to achieve what Waller recommends in his new book <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538118061/Science-and-Secrets-of-Ending-Violent-Crime"><em>Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime</em></a>.</p>
<p>Waller makes a case that by now seems almost self-evident, based on nothing more than common sense. The internationally respected criminologist, who has advised many governments and the United Nations, does not limit himself to common sense, however. He uses data and scientific evidence rigorously.</p>
<p>In his new book, Waller bemoans the fact that, with the exception of England and Wales, "governments around the world have found more and more money to spend on their reactive criminal justice systems."</p>
<p>And, he adds, "We have seen much of that funding has had little or no effect on ending violent crime."</p>
<p><strong>Billions on cops and jails to no effect</strong></p>
<p>Waller cites data to show how huge increases in spending on policing and incarceration have not had the desired effect, and, at times, have had quite the opposite effect.</p>
<p>In 1980, the United States was spending close to $20 billion on policing and just under $10 billion on the prison system and criminal courts. Twenty years later those numbers had reached $75 billion for policing, $55 billion for corrections and $30 billion for courts. Those increases for futile, coercive and punitive measures were three times the increases in spending on elementary and secondary education.</p>
<p>In addition, it is well established fact that, as Waller puts it, in the U.S. "penal policies fall heavily on the poor, Blacks, and Hispanics."</p>
<p>Most of the millions of incarcerated Americans are men, but, in many ways, it is their families who pay the heaviest price. They "have problems with keeping their housing, and behavioural problems run rampant among the children, who, at 2.1 million, number as many as the inmates."</p>
<p>"Rich and powerful people," Waller writes, "are not likely to be arrested for crimes. But poor people of colour, living in disadvantaged circumstances, oh, how they can be affected by standard police actions! Consider the close to 1,000 people who are killed by police in the U.S., each year."</p>
<p>Canada and Mexico have similar records to the U.S.</p>
<p>Mexico's spending on police and the army rose 61 per cent between 2005 and 2015. During that same period, Waller reports, "homicide records have spiked."</p>
<p>In Canada, the total cost of policing increased from $6 billion in 2000 to $14.7 billion in 2017. Most of that money has come from the budgets of cash-strapped municipalities, and it has forced municipal governments to cut other services, often social services that are necessary to prevent crime "upstream."</p>
<p>Waller argues that municipalities are the level of government best equipped to implement crime-prevention programs, but, in Canada, they are handicapped by the fact that they only access eight per cent of tax revenue, with most of that coming from property taxes.</p>
<p><strong>The examples of Glasgow and Bogota</strong></p>
<p>What kind of investments would have a salutary effect on the rate of violent crime?</p>
<p>Waller cites a great many, ranging from life-skills training to family therapy to home visits by public health nurses -- which help prevent abuse of children (which, in turn, contributes to youth not getting involved in crime).</p>
<p>He cites positive examples from many countries. One of the most instructive of those is that of Glasgow, Scotland's most populous city. That city lowered its murder rate by 50 per cent through what Waller calls "smart law enforcement" combined with "programs targeted to youth, family health and other services in problem places."</p>
<p>Glasgow's strategy has included tough and focused deterrence, using what Waller refers to as "proactive policing." Being proactive does not mean stopping and frisking every person of colour walking down the street. It does mean "a zero-tolerance warning that, if violence does not stop, life is going to get very tough for every single gang member."</p>
<p>More important for Glasgow's success has been its social development model, which includes "early childhood education, parenting support, youth conflict resolution in schools, street outreach and interventions in hospitals to mentor people out of violence."</p>
<p>Glasgow is a medium-sized city, with a population of less than one million. Bogota, Colombia is a mega-municipality, with a population comparable to that of New York. But it, too, implemented a crime-prevention model based on upstream measures rather than massive punishment, and it has achieved similar success to Glasgow.</p>
<p>Decades ago, the Colombian metropolis created a permanent violence prevention unit, reporting directly to the mayor. That unit has succeeded in reducing the violent crime rate from 80 per 100,000 in 1993 to 23 per 100,000 10 years later, and that rate, Waller says, is still going down.</p>
<p>Among the measures Bogota has taken, based on data and evidence, are stringent control of handguns and limiting access to alcohol "during high violence evenings."</p>
<p>Irvin Waller's <em>Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime</em> is rich in many other concrete and tangible examples. The author's hope is that policy makers will seriously examine and take heed of its many science-supported recommendations.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/10490113913/">Thomas Hawk/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Fri, 17 May 2019 18:18:20 +0000rabble staff161176 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/crime-expert-says-better-social-programs-not-more-prisons-will-reduce-violence#commentsThe big battle over climate change is just startinghttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/big-battle-over-climate-change-just-starting
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/05/big-battle-over-climate-change-just-starting"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/39953186114_04c4254455_k_0.jpg?itok=kJp81E1c" width="1180" height="600" alt="NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Photo: Wayne Polk/Flickr" title="NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Photo: Wayne Polk/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>On Wednesday, May 15, the federal NDP will use an opposition day in the House of Commons to focus like a laser on climate change. Jagmeet Singh's party will make some sweeping and bold policy proposals.</p>
<p>That is only one sign that the war of words over global warming is getting hotter. In that war, the who-cares-about-climate-change side seems to have gotten the jump on the pro-environment side.</p>
<p>The Doug Ford government of Ontario will soon be airing blatantly one-sided ads with a simple and simplistic message: carbon taxes make everything more expensive.</p>
<p>The ads devote a few seconds to say there are better ways than taxation to deal with climate change. But their list of those better ways is bizarre: hold the biggest polluters accountable, reduce trash, and keep Ontario's lakes clean. The first way is part of the current federal government's carbon emission reduction plan, while the latter two would no doubt be salutary, if they were to happen. The ads do not explain, however, what, if anything, they have to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.</p>
<p>During Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne's time, the Ontario auditor general criticized government ads that looked and sounded too politically partisan. She advocated that her office should have the power to vet all government advertising for accuracy and context.</p>
<p>The Ford Conservatives, then in opposition, promised to heed that advice. Doug Ford did not wait even a full year before he brazenly broke that promise.</p>
<p>While Ford and his allies, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, take an axe to efforts to combat climate change -- in the courts, in their legislatures and in their propaganda -- sympathetic right-of-centre pundits are working overtime to provide something resembling an ideology for their movement.</p>
<p>In the pages of the <em>National Post</em>, former oil sands executive Gwyn Morgan engages in a sophisticated form of climate-change denial. He argues that the disastrous floods we have been experiencing in parts of Canada are the result of a long and cold winter, with record high snowfalls. "Isn't climate change supposed to be about global warming?" he asks rhetorically.</p>
<p>The answer is yes -- with a big qualification. Climate change is, indeed, producing far higher temperatures, overall, than in the past. But what does this warming trend do? It melts glaciers, raises sea levels and adds moisture to the air. All of these effects drive erratic, fluctuating and often violent weather events.</p>
<p>Here, in the Ottawa area, we had six unprecedented tornadoes last summer, and a wild, crazy and unpredictable winter that included both massive snowfalls and many above-zero thaws, often with significant volumes of rain. The refreezing of all that rain and partially melted snow produced a particularly hard-packed and, as it turns out, dangerous snow mass.</p>
<p>Morgan is not really interested in science, in any case. His main point is that nothing little old Canada might do about global warming would be worth the bother, since many Asian countries are still burning coal and, globally, greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow far beyond the rate the Paris Agreement recommends.</p>
<p>The headline to Morgan's piece advertises a principled Conservative policy on climate change. It turns out that policy is to do nothing all. Forget about green energy and electric cars and all that useless and costly nonsense. If we must spend any money on the climate crisis, Morgan asserts, it should only be on mitigating its effects, not fighting its causes.</p>
<p><em>National Post</em> columnists Lorne Gunter and Terence Corcoran make similar arguments. When they briefly turn their attention to science it is to claim, without supporting evidence, there is no consensus that the current flooding crisis can be attributed to climate change. They quote unnamed experts who, we are told, have described these floods as normal, cyclical occurrences. </p>
<p>Gunter and Corcoran pointedly fail to mention any of the significant scientific work on climate change out there. The multiple and detailed reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the recent United Nations scientific study that forecast the extinction of a million species represent a massive, worldwide scientific consensus. The <em>National Post's</em> anti-environmental ideologues seem to have missed them. </p>
<p><strong>Canada's business community is sitting on its hands when it comes to climate change</strong></p>
<p>There are elements in the business community which do worry about the climate crisis and the future of the planet. But they are a minority.</p>
<p>The enlightened capitalists who put out the <em>Corporate Knights</em> publication recently featured a piece by the deposed Ontario environment commissioner Dianne Saxe, entitled: "<a href="https://www.corporateknights.com/channels/climate-and-carbon/time-call-climate-emergency-act-accordingly-15574967/" target="_blank">It's time to call climate change what it is -- an emergency -- and act accordingly.</a>"</p>
<p>Saxe lauds the many municipalities around the world, including in Canada, that have declared climate emergencies. To put meat on the bones of those declarations, she suggests tangible actions, such as making communities "walkable," improving active (by bicycle and foot) and public transit, and enhancing and restoring urban forests.</p>
<p>The former environment commissioner gives highest marks to the city of Vancouver. By 2030, she reports, 90 per cent of the people in Vancouver will live within an easy walk of their daily needs, and by 2025 all new heating and replacement heat and hot water systems in that city will be emissions-free.</p>
<p>More typical of the business view of climate change is the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. For that major business lobby group, global warming seems to be entirely off the radar.</p>
<p>The chamber's president Perrin Beatty has just issued an open letter to the leaders of all federal political parties, on behalf of his thousands of members, calling for business-friendly policies.</p>
<p>The chamber wants a fair tax system that is efficient and modern, access to new markets around the world, a more digitally connected Canada, improved skills education and training, and an affordable pharmacare plan that will not disrupt existing employer plans.</p>
<p>Despite the oft-demonstrated severe economic costs of the erratic and violent weather events associated with climate change, the chamber's letter does not include any demands or suggestions connected to global warming -- or to the environment more generally. To all appearances, this major business group does not subscribe to the official Liberal party view that the environment and the economy go hand in hand.</p>
<p><strong>Three federal parties hit back, and hit each other</strong></p>
<p>In the federal Parliament, the Trudeau government is fighting back on social media and on the pre-campaign trail.</p>
<p>Environment Minister Catherine McKenna vigorously took issue with the Ford government ads, as she had with its requirement that all gas stations carry stickers whingeing about the cost of the carbon tax. McKenna pointed out that the Ontario Conservatives mischievously fail to acknowledge that the Liberal carbon plan includes both taxes and rebates, and that the rebates, for most taxpayers, more than compensate for the taxes.</p>
<p>Green leader Elizabeth May is flying high right now on the winds of her party's recent successes in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith by-election and the Prince Edward Island provincial election. The media is giving her a spotlight and she is taking advantage of it to tell Canadians the Trudeau government has been a big disappointment on the greenhouse gas emissions file -- its ambitious rhetoric notwithstanding.</p>
<p>May picks up an argument the NDP has consistently made going back to Thomas Mulcair's time -- that the Liberals' emissions target is the same as the Harper government's, and we are not even on track to meet that one.</p>
<p>Trudeau, May says, is too concerned about short term political considerations. That's why, she told one interviewer, he bought a pipeline to ship oil sands bitumen to offshore markets that don't even exist.</p>
<p>The federal NDP has decided to pick up its game on the climate change issue in the wake of the Nanaimo-Ladysmith loss. Its opposition-day motion demands that the government declare an environment and climate emergency, and proposes tougher emissions targets, in line with the IPCC recommendation that we should limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by 2030.</p>
<p>The NDP also asks that, as part of a climate change strategy, the government prioritize reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and invest in a transition that leaves no worker or community behind.</p>
<p>When it comes to particulars, the NDP wants the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project cancelled and it proposes the elimination of all fossil fuel subsidies, direct and indirect. Among the latter, are the longstanding, generous federal tax breaks for oil and gas exploration.</p>
<p>The war for public opinion is now fully engaged -- and that opinion seems to be deeply divided, often against itself.</p>
<p>Recent opinion polls report both widespread worry about carbon-tax-related increases in fuel prices, combined with some skepticism about the effectiveness of taxing pollution to reduce emissions, and support for vigorous measures to fight climate change.</p>
<p>Canadians are somehow able to be on all sides of the issue at once.</p>
<p>One reassuring recent poll did show that a majority of Canadians do not approve of provincial governments using tax dollars to battle federal climate change policies. Perhaps Premier Ford and his allies are about to learn the truth of Abraham Lincoln's dictum, which starts "You can fool some of the people some of the time…"</p>
<p>You probably know the rest.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdncrooner/39953186114/in/photolist-WSzuF2-23Swwhs-2eWG4UT-SNSQs3-NCx771-29EGacA-aHyvVk-QTeiFH-23kJBgs-29EG8Mb" target="_blank">Wayne Polk/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Tue, 14 May 2019 18:23:02 +0000rabble staff160971 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/big-battle-over-climate-change-just-starting#commentsQuebec's Bill 21 is about fear of difference, not being secularhttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/quebecs-bill-21-about-fear-difference-not-being-secular
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/05/quebecs-bill-21-about-fear-difference-not-being-secular"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/quebecprotest-865x440.jpg?itok=7SWFld1B" width="1180" height="600" alt="Protest against Quebec&#039;s Charter of Values in 2013. Photo: ibourgeault_tasse/Flickr" title="Protest against Quebec&#039;s Charter of Values in 2013. Photo: ibourgeault_tasse/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>There are currently hearings at the Quebec national assembly on the latest effort to protect the "secular" character of the Quebec state. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government's Bill 21 would forbid teachers, judges, prosecutors, nurses and other public servants from wearing visible religious symbols, such as the Jewish yarmulke or Muslim hijab.</p>
<p>Among those who have testified are self-appointed spokespeople for atheists and agnostics, who argue that organized religion has been, on the whole, a divisive and oppressive force. They heartily support Bill 21 and only wish it went much further.</p>
<p>These secular fundamentalists say that to free ourselves from the yoke of religious obscurantism we must deny basic rights to members of religious and cultural minority groups. It is a line of argument this writer finds to be particularly odious.</p>
<p>Here's why.</p>
<p><strong>Go to the English Protestant school</strong></p>
<p>I grew up in a Quebec that could in no way be described as secular.</p>
<p>For the first 14 years of my life, the now defunct Union Nationale ruled the province. Its leader, until his death in 1959, was the formidable strongman, Maurice Duplessis. The Union Nationale believed in a close alliance between the Roman Catholic Church and the state. Schools, many hospitals and social services were, for the most part, run by the church or other religious entities.</p>
<p>My family was secular, left-wing and Jewish. Religion did not play a big role in our life, although a cultural and historic sense of being Jewish did.</p>
<p>The Second World War was not far behind during my formative years, and we were painfully aware of the Nazis' efforts to exterminate the Jews, long before the Holocaust became a fashionable subject. (It was the beginning of the Cold War. The mainstream view was that we should not dwell on the crimes of the Nazis, now that the West Germans were our allies in the global contest with the Soviet bloc.)</p>
<p>My parents wanted me to go to school in French, to learn the language of the Quebec majority. But schools were organized on the basis of religion back then. The French-language schools of Quebec were also Catholic schools. They were exclusively for Roman Catholics, and had no place for heterogeneous elements.</p>
<p>We Jews were all directed to the Protestant, English-language school system. There, we learned New Testament Bible stories and sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" with gusto.</p>
<p>I mastered the French language nonetheless, and later in life worked almost exclusively in French for a number of years.</p>
<p><strong>Law 101, but still religiously based schools</strong></p>
<p>My three kids came of school age in the post French Language Charter (Law 101) days, which deemed that French-language education was to be the default choice for the vast majority of Quebecers. </p>
<p>French-language schools became obligatory for almost everyone, including many who had previously opted for, or been directed to, the English system. The only exceptions were children of parents who were educated in Quebec, in English. They could attend English schools, if they wished.</p>
<p>My own children fell into that exception category, but we chose the French system. That meant sending them to Catholic schools. Unlike me, they were welcomed without reservation.</p>
<p>Still, as non-Catholics, we had to sign a form requesting an exemption for our kids from formal, Roman Catholic religious instruction. Each week, when the time came for the obligatory catechism class, our kids were singled out and sent, with the handful of others from non-Catholic or avowedly non-believing families, to classes in "morale," a non-sectarian course in ethical values. When I once asked a principal what they actually did in "morale" class, he answered: "Ils jasent" ("They chat.")</p>
<p>The first Parti Québécois (PQ) government, led by René Levesque, passed Law 101 in 1977, but it was not until 1997 that a later PQ government got around to eliminating religious-based public schools and school boards -- too late for my kids. </p>
<p>Even after they eliminated public schools with religious identity, the Quebec government allowed a sort of escape route for those who still wanted denominational education. It continued to provide generous subsidies to private schools. And so, Quebec middle class families maintained their access to private, and very often religiously-based, education.</p>
<p><strong>Francophone -- and Muslim -- immigrants</strong></p>
<p>Around the same time as it brought in Law 101, Quebec struck a deal with the federal government for a significant measure of control over immigration. In the ensuing years, the province admitted tens of thousands of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. Quebec wanted to favour French-speaking immigrants and, as it happened, a great many of those came from Muslim countries.</p>
<p>Today, practising Muslims from Morocco, Tunisia, Guinea, Mali, Chad and many other countries form a significant part of the larger francophone community, both in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. They hold jobs in all occupations and professions, including teaching, nursing and the law.</p>
<p>Our grandchild goes to a French public school in Ottawa where the student body is, in the majority, Muslim, from both North and sub-Saharan Africa. There could be a phenomenon of white flight at play here. Ontario still has a separate Catholic school system, and it appears that in Ottawa old-stock, white, French-speaking families have overwhelmingly chosen that system over the public one.</p>
<p>At our grandchild's French public school, many of the parents and some of the teachers wear the hijab. That's just the way it is.</p>
<p>Nobody engages in any sort of religious proselytization based on the way they dress. Nobody is trying to recreate an Islamic theocracy on the lines of Duplessis' church-dominated Quebec. They just want to be part of the larger society, while maintaining their own identity.</p>
<p>I survived learning Christian hymns as a child. Our grandchild will more than survive having visibly Muslim classmates and teachers. She will be enriched by the experience.</p>
<p>As long as the vast majority of visible religious symbols in Quebec were Christian, nobody complained about the undue influence of religion. But now that an Islamic presence has become more visible, more a fabric of everyday life, religious symbols have suddenly become a matter of grave concern.</p>
<p>Frankly, Bill 21 is not really about religion; it is about difference, and a society's capacity to accept it as a normal and unexceptional reality.</p>
<p>I share the view of the ardent secularists who told a committee of the Quebec national assembly that, throughout history, religion has contributed as much misery as it has good to humanity -- maybe even more.</p>
<p>But if such folks were genuinely worried about the negative impact of religion, they would have long ago removed the huge cross from atop Mount Royal and renamed every street and place name in Quebec that starts with "Saint" with something appropriately secular.</p>
<p>That is a ridiculous suggestion, of course.</p>
<p>So is telling a person who wears a turban or a yarmulke or a hijab they may not teach or guard prisons or plead in court or tend to the sick.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: </em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ibourgeault-tasse/13180230994/in/album-72157642412041014/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><em>ibourgeault_tasse/Flickr</em></a></p>
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</div></div></div>Fri, 10 May 2019 15:15:35 +0000rabble staff160811 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/quebecs-bill-21-about-fear-difference-not-being-secular#commentsPaul Manly's Green victory is personal vindication and sends a message on climate changehttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/paul-manlys-green-victory-personal-vindication-and-sends-message-climate-change
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/05/paul-manlys-green-victory-personal-vindication-and-sends-message-climate-change"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/Paul%20Manly-865x440.jpg?itok=ChIibsoP" width="1180" height="600" alt="Paul Manly. Photo: Green Party of Canada/Facebook" title="Paul Manly. Photo: Green Party of Canada/Facebook" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Green candidate Paul Manly has won the federal byelection in Nanaimo-Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, a seat formerly held by the NDP's Sheila Malcolmson. Commentators are saying the result is a wake-up call for all of Canada's political class. It means Canadians might be much more serious about climate change than most politicians seem to think, they say.</p>
<p>That may or may not be true. One byelection does not tell the whole story.</p>
<p>What is definitely true is that the result is a great one for the Green Party. It gives a thumbs-up to the excellent work Green Leader Elizabeth May has done in the House since first winning a seat in 2011. Opinion polls routinely show that May is the only federal leader with a positive favourability rating.</p>
<p>But there is also an important backstory to this victory.</p>
<p>During the 1980s, Paul Manly's father, Jim Manly, was an NDP MP for the federal riding that lies just south of Nanaimo-Ladysmith. When he left politics, the elder Manly became active in advocating for the rights of Indigenous people in Canada and in Central America. He wrote a book about martyred Kaqchikel Presbyterian minister Manuel Saquic Vásquez, one of the thousands of Guatemalans murdered by the military and by paramilitary death squads.</p>
<p>Jim Manly also vigorously supported the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>In 2012, he was part of a mission, on the sailing vessel the Estelle, to breach the Israeli embargo on the occupied Gaza Strip. The aim was to deliver much needed non-military supplies to the people of Gaza. Israeli troops boarded the ship in international waters, before it could reach its destination, and arrested 30 activists, including Jim Manly. </p>
<p>When that happened, Paul Manly immediately went to work to attain his father's release. The junior Manly was more than annoyed that Israeli authorities required his father to sign a document falsely confessing that he had entered Israel illegally. The Estelle was not even destined for Israel; it was headed for Gaza.</p>
<p>More important, Paul Manly was bitterly disappointed that neither the Conservative government of the day nor any of the major political parties, including the NDP, <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/canadianboattogaza/2012/10/my-father-jim-manly-must-be-released-immediately" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">showed much interest in his father's case</a>.</p>
<p>Jim Manly got out of detention quickly and unharmed, but the incident created a rift between Paul Manly and the Tom Mulcair-led NDP. When the junior Manly attempted to run for the NDP nomination in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, in 2015, party headquarters blocked him. Rebuffed by his own party he switched teams and ran for the Greens, but only managed a fourth-place finish. Monday's byelection told a different tale.</p>
<p><strong>There is some wind in Green sails</strong></p>
<p>The Green victory in Nanaimo-Ladysmith might only be a local, personal and evanescent phenomenon. But this writer has been picking up indications from erstwhile NDP and Liberal supporters in other parts of the country that they are thinking of voting Green next time.</p>
<p>The fearsome scientific forecasts of potential environmental and climate catastrophe -- of which the UN report on biodiversity released on Monday, May 6, is only the latest -- could be having a greater impact on public opinion than the mainstream media and political class seem to believe.</p>
<p>One long-time NDP activist privately wrote this writer not too long ago to say she had recently switched to the Greens from the NDP, because, as she put it, "Elizabeth May is clearly the strongest, most articulate and sage leader."</p>
<p>The party switcher added that the Greens have "a great local activist in my riding of Ottawa Centre, who is going to bravely stand up and take on our Liberal incumbent, the Minister of the Environment." She concluded that she was "hearing from a lot of other progressive peoples that they too will be voting Green this fall." </p>
<p>One letter does not a movement make, but there is evidence that this Ottawa activist is not alone. For instance, in British Columbia some progressive voters have expressed irritation at their NDP government's tergiversations on such issues as the export of natural gas and fracking.</p>
<p>During the last federal election campaign, when NDP candidate Linda McQuaig suggested that the sane environmental course might be to leave some of the tar sands product in the ground, the party quickly forced her to retract. If the same were to happen again in the coming election, we might not see the same result.</p>
<p>Like the Trudeau Liberals, New Democrats have often affirmed they believe it is possible to conciliate the environment and the economy. With good reason, most politicians shy away from telling workers and entrepreneurs in the energy or any other important economic sector that, for the sake of the environment, their jobs and businesses will have to be phased out, and in fairly short order.</p>
<p>Many voters, however, might now believe it is past time for efforts to conciliate interests that are, at heart, unreconcilable. Their view is that we will not have much of an economy if the floods, storms, droughts and other disastrous weather events we are currently experiencing presage much worse to come.</p>
<p>Commenting on Monday's U.N. biodiversity report, scientists have noted that while it is not possible to forecast the environmental future with pinpoint accuracy, our experience to date is that adverse climate related events have engulfed us at a faster rate than most experts had predicted.</p>
<p>That sort of talk is starting to scare many Canadians. As folk singer Pete Seeger wrote many years ago about another threat to humanity, nuclear war: "Einstein says he's scared and if Einstein's scared, I'm scared."</p>
<p><strong>Good for Andrew Scheer's Conservatives?</strong></p>
<p>Those who are, mostly, terrified that our first-past-the-post electoral system could deliver a cheap victory to Andrew Scheer's climate-change-denying Conservatives next time will worry about what the Nanaimo-Ladysmith results portend. In October, the three parties that (at least rhetorically) recognize the reality of the climate crisis could split the left-centre vote, normally 60 per cent or more of the electorate. That would allow the let's-make-gas-cheaper Conservatives to slip into power with less than 40 per cent of the vote.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Conservatives might be the happiest of all the parties at this week's result. Not only did it reveal multiple rifts on the centre-left of the political spectrum, it showed that Maxime Bernier and his Peoples' Party, which only garnered three per cent of the vote, do not appear to pose a serious threat.</p>
<p>Then again, it is possible even the Conservatives are hearing the message of intense environmental concern that emerges from Nanaimo-Ladysmith.</p>
<p>Today, Tuesday, May 7, is the federal Conservatives' day to propose an opposition motion to the House of Commons, and theirs reads: "That the House call on the government to stop raising the price of gas by clearing the way for pipelines and eliminating the carbon tax on fuel."</p>
<p>Conservatives have gone ahead with this motion, and as they usually do, have devoted all of their time and energy to ranting and raving against carbon taxes, uttering not a word about what their alternate climate-change solutions might be.</p>
<p>However, Conservative front-bencher Pierre Poilievre had been scheduled to hold a media availability on the kill-carbon-pricing motion on Tuesday morning, but, seemingly in the wake of the Green byelection victory, cancelled it at the last minute.</p>
<p>Is it possible federal Conservatives are afraid of facing tough questions from reporters as to what they have to say to the many Canadians who, to all appearances, are deeply worried about the future of the planet?</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: Green Party of Canada/Facebook​</em></p>
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</div></div></div>Tue, 07 May 2019 16:34:45 +0000rabble staff160666 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/05/paul-manlys-green-victory-personal-vindication-and-sends-message-climate-change#commentsP.E.I. election has lessons for all of Canadahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/pei-election-has-lessons-all-canada
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/04/pei-election-has-lessons-all-canada"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/DennisKing-865x440.jpg?itok=cHxBus8f" width="1180" height="600" alt="Dennis King. Photo: Dennis King/Twitter" title="Dennis King. Photo: Dennis King/Twitter" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>When media organizations announced the result of Tuesday's election in Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.), they all called it a Progressive Conservative (PC) minority government. That's because the PCs got the largest number of seats, 12 out of 27. The Green Party got an unprecedented eight seats and the defeated Liberals won six, giving the two parties a combined 14, a majority of the seats.</p>
<p>The Greens and Liberals could decide to combine forces and govern. That is the current arrangement in British Columbia, where the NDP has fewer seats than the Liberals, but governs with the support of the third-place Greens.</p>
<p>And so, what Islanders elected on Tuesday, April 23, is not, in fact, a minority government for any party. It is a legislature in which no party has a majority of seats. In the U.K., they would call it a hung parliament.</p>
<p>With such an outcome, it is not a foregone conclusion that the party with the most seats (but not more than half) will be able to gain the confidence of the legislature and keep power.</p>
<p>In B.C.'s 2017 election, the Liberals won the most seats, but fell short of a majority. Shortly thereafter, they tried, but failed, to win the legislature's confidence. The NDP and Greens then forged a formal alliance, a confidence-and-supply agreement, and presented it to then-lieutenant-governor Judith Guichon. She called on John Horgan's NDP to form a government and seek the confidence of the legislature. Horgan won his first and all subsequent votes of confidence, and is still in power today, nearly two years later.</p>
<p>The same could, at least in theory, happen in P.E.I.</p>
<p>We could have a Green-led government, either in a power-sharing coalition with the Liberals, or in a B.C.-style minority. Such an outcome is not likely, however, at least not in the short term. That's because the PC leader, Dennis King, has clearly said he favours a collaborative style of governing, and the other parties will be inclined to give him a chance to prove he means it.</p>
<p><strong>A pro-choice PC leader who wants a carbon neutral society</strong></p>
<p>King is new to electoral, but not backroom, politics. He was a communications advisor to the last PC premier, Pat Binns, and was long active behind the scenes in Island politics. Earlier in his career, the current PC leader worked as a journalist for Island newspapers and as a communications manager for government and an Indigenous community.</p>
<p>More recently, King had re-invented himself as "Denny" King, the professional storyteller. In that capacity, he promised potential clients "an evening of off the cuff storytelling, talking politics, religion, liquor and language -- maybe even a local impression or two." The clincher of his pitch was that if you added "a dash of live music" you would have "one hell of a kitchen party."</p>
<p>Polls had predicted the Greens would come first in popular vote, but it did not turn out that way.</p>
<p>The Green party, led by Peter Bevan-Baker got over 30 per cent of the vote, a historic high for the party in any election in Canada, anywhere. However, in a defeat for the pollsters, it was the PCs who came first, with 37 per cent of the vote. That result will offer a measure of encouragement to the Island PCs' federal Conservative cousins. In the 2015 election, the Harper Conservatives badly lost all four seats to the Liberals. They only managed to get more than 20 per cent of the vote in a single riding, the one that had been held by then minister of revenue Gail Shea.</p>
<p>Andrew Scheer's federal Conservatives should not over interpret Tuesday's P.E.I. result, however. Dennis King is no Doug Ford or Jason Kenney. In fact, he ran, first for his party's leadership and then for the premiership, not as an anti-environment, right-wing ideologue, but as a consensus-seeking pragmatist. His principal promise was to "loosen the partisan grip on our democratic institutions." He has repeatedly pledged to consider all "good ideas proposed by all parties."</p>
<p>King is unambiguously pro-choice on abortion and has said he wants to create a carbon-neutral society, a policy that is light years away from anything mainland-Conservatives advocate. In his victory speech on election night, the PC leader told supporters: "I think Islanders want us [the elected politicians] to consult broadly with each other and with Islanders, and that's the kind of leadership that I'm going to provide."</p>
<p>It is hard to remember the last time we heard a federal Conservative leader talk that way.</p>
<p><strong>Greens can now prove their mettle</strong></p>
<p>The Greens have a right to feel pretty euphoric about the result, even if it fell short of pollsters' predictions. They will have a chance to prove their worth in Opposition and establish their credentials as an alternative government.</p>
<p>How much this result will mean for Elizabeth May's federal Greens is difficult to say. It is true that May's party has been doing relatively well in recent polls, but one should not read too much into those numbers. Voters seem to feel more comfortable parking their vote with the Greens between elections than actually voting for them.</p>
<p>Those who, mostly, want to avoid the catastrophe of an Andrew Scheer victory, federally, in October, will feel highly ambivalent about the rise of yet another party on the notionally progressive side of the political map.</p>
<p>In P.E.I., the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system just delivered a highly unusual proportional vote. Each party got pretty close to its share of the vote in seats. That, however, almost never happens. Normally, FPTP disproportionately rewards the first-place party with a seat haul far in excess, proportionately, of its popular vote. </p>
<p>The harsh and unavoidable fact is that if, in the coming federal election, voters who share broad, general agreement on the environment and on social justice divide their support three ways, the party on the other side of that consensus will almost certainly be the one to benefit most.</p>
<p>In P.E.I., there was, together with the election, a referendum on a proposal to ditch FPTP and adopt a mixed member proportional system. It narrowly failed. The change option got a bit less than 50 per cent of the vote.</p>
<p>The fact that in P.E.I.'s legislative election the current system delivered a fairly accurate reflection of voters' choices this time might now lull Islanders into believing they do not need electoral reform.</p>
<p>That would be a mistake.</p>
<p>The people of P.E.I., and of Canada as a whole, would do well to remember that Tuesday's highly proportional result in P.E.I. was a very rare one for the first-past-the-post system.</p>
<p>It would be foolhardy to expect such electoral lightning to strike twice.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://twitter.com/dennyking/media" target="_blank">Dennis King/Twitter</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 24 Apr 2019 17:56:30 +0000rabble staff160161 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/pei-election-has-lessons-all-canada#commentsTrudeau government panders to fears of an invasion of refugeeshttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/trudeau-government-panders-fears-invasion-refugees
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/04/trudeau-government-panders-fears-invasion-refugees"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/JustinT-865x440.jpg?itok=em2PqVle" width="1180" height="600" alt="Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Photo: Adam Scotti/PMO" title="Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Photo: Adam Scotti/PMO" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The Trudeau government has dropped the other shoe on refugee policy.</p>
<p>As we reported in this space last week, sources close to the Prime Minister's Office had been whispering for a while that the government might insert legislation into its 2019 budget implementation bill to discourage asylum seekers from crossing into Canada from the U.S. through unguarded back roads and unplowed fields.</p>
<p>That not entirely surprise move came on Monday evening, April 8.</p>
<p>Buried in the middle of this year's 367-page budget implementation bill was an amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It stated that refugee claimants will be<em> ineligible</em> if they previously "made a claim for refugee protection to a country other than Canada."</p>
<p>As it stands now, the safe third country agreement with the United States allows Canada to turn back all refugee claimants who arrive from the U.S. at <em>official</em> border crossings. But under current law and international agreements Canada must fully consider the claims of asylum seekers who get themselves onto Canadian soil through <em>unofficial</em> back routes. The new provision will allow the Canadian government to deal expeditiously with a good many of those irregular arrivals.</p>
<p>The amendment means all refugee claimants who have previously sought asylum in the U.S. (or another country) will be denied access to Canada's impartial Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). No Canadian official will consider the substance of their claims of persecution or endangerment. Before such asylum seekers are sent packing, all they will be entitled to are pre-removal risk assessments, the purpose of which is to ascertain if they face any demonstrable and immediate danger if deported.</p>
<p>And so, the government now has a weapon to wield against those back-route asylum seekers. A good many of them first sought asylum in the U.S., but then headed north, believing they could never get a fair shake from Donald Trump's government.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, Canada's federal court threw out a provision in Canada's refugee law that discriminated against asylum seekers from an arbitrary list of safe designated countries of origin. That was a rule Jason Kenney came up with when he was Stephen Harper's immigration minister. Given a chance, that same federal court just might throw out the amendment the Liberals slipped into the budget implementation bill. But any court decision is very unlikely to happen before the next election.</p>
<p>With a challenging campaign looming in the fall, Justin Trudeau's Liberals can now throw a bone to those Canadians who are feeling anxious about what they perceive as a dangerous invasion of refugees. There is no such invasion, relative to our capacity to absorb newcomers. But a good many politicians, from Quebec Premier François Legault to Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, have incited that fear as a vote-getting tactic. </p>
<p>Human-rights groups and refugee advocates are expressing shock at this move by a government that has been, overall, far friendlier to refugees than most of its predecessors.</p>
<p>Critics point out that the U.S. cannot be considered a safe country for refugees -- not these days, at any rate. Indeed, Donald Trump's administration does not <em>want</em> would-be refugees to see the U.S. as a safe haven. That is why U.S. officials are incarcerating so many asylum seekers who arrive at the southern border, and why, for a while, they separated small children from their parents. Trump and his officials were frank about the message they were sending. Do not come here claiming to be a refugee. We do not want you, and consider you to be, in the president's words, "bad people, very bad people."</p>
<p>The NDP is also critical of the change to the refugee rules. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been especially caustic about the fact that the government chose not to introduce this measure as immigration legislation. Instead it is sneaking it through parliament in a budget bill. The Trudeau Liberals did the same for the deferred prosecution measure, designed as an eleventh-hour life raft for SNC-Lavalin, but that's another story.</p>
<p><strong>Refugees are not popular with politicians</strong></p>
<p>If the government were to introduce the new refugee measure in the usual manner, as immigration legislation, the immigration committee would be charged with considering it.</p>
<p>At the immigration committee, there would be ample opportunity for expert witnesses to defend or critique the measure. MPs on the committee would be able to thoroughly question the witnesses, and could propose modifications to the government's refugee law amendment.</p>
<p>As it stands, though, this important change in refugee law will get only cursory consideration from the finance committee, which is tasked with reviewing the entire, massive, multi-part budget implementation bill.</p>
<p>Even Conservative leader Scheer says he disapproves of the way the Liberals have chosen to proceed with this measure. That is a bit rich. The Harper government passed a large piece of its entire legislative agenda -- including major changes to environmental laws -- through budget implementation bills.</p>
<p>The cruel fact is, though, that, politically, refugees are not a popular cause.</p>
<p>The prime minister takes all of the questions during question periods on Wednesdays, and on Wednesday, April 10, two days after the government had tabled the budget implementation bill, the opposition had ample opportunity to question him about the proposed change in refugee law.</p>
<p>Here is what they did ask questions about.</p>
<p>The Conservatives leapt with glee on the prime minister's foolish threat to sue Andrew Scheer over statements he made on SNC-Lavalin. They dared Justin Trudeau to take them to court, and pointed out that if the PM were to utter false statements about the scandal in court it would constitute perjury. They also jumped on a report about RCMP participation in planning for the prime minister's ill-fated vacation in the Bahamas as a guest of the Aga Khan -- a bit of a shaggy dog story that's almost ancient history now.</p>
<p>For their part, New Democrats also hammered the PM on SNC-Lavalin, but were less interested in goading the PM than pushing their own proposal for a full public inquiry.</p>
<p>NDPers also expressed well-rehearsed outrage at the fact that the environment minister has just very publicly given the highly profitable Loblaw's corporation a cheque for 12 million dollars in order to buy more energy efficient refrigerators for its grocery stores. That money, part of a fund earmarked to help Canada reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, should, NDPers suggested, go to small business people who might really need it, not the multi-billionaire Weston family.</p>
<p>There was not a single question from anyone in the House about the just-announced change in refugee policy, a change which could have a devastating effect on thousands of vulnerable people. For some asylum seekers, it could, in fact, have life and death impact.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://pm.gc.ca/eng/photos" target="_blank">Adam Scotti/PMO</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Thu, 11 Apr 2019 14:00:45 +0000rabble staff159621 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/trudeau-government-panders-fears-invasion-refugees#commentsTrudeau has proven himself feckless, but Scheer is scaryhttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/trudeau-has-proven-himself-feckless-scheer-scary
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/04/trudeau-has-proven-himself-feckless-scheer-scary"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/Scheer-865x440.jpg?itok=ndPeX9bJ" width="1180" height="600" alt="Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Photo: Andrew Scheer/Flickr" title="Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Photo: Andrew Scheer/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Progressives in Canada have many good reasons to be disappointed with the Justin Trudeau Liberal government. Tangible achievements on key agenda items such as Indigenous reconciliation, greenhouse gas reductions and closing the inequality gap have been halting and uneven.</p>
<p>On democratic reform, a signature Trudeau promise, progress has been virtually non-existent. Trudeau cavalierly dropped his electoral reform pledge, and he maintained the centralized Prime Minister's Office (PMO) power structure he promised to change. In fact, based on the testimony of Gerald Butts, it looks like Trudeau made the PMO more controlling than ever.</p>
<p>Even where there seemed to be an easy win, the Trudeau government has shied away from taking action that might challenge corporate power.</p>
<p>A year and half ago, the government pledged to appoint an ombudsperson for responsible enterprise. That official would have real powers to investigate abuses of and correct damage caused by Canadian companies operating abroad, especially in the developing world.</p>
<p>On Monday, April 8, the federal trade promotion minister, Jim Carr, named lawyer Sheri Meyerhoffer to the ombudsperson position. Critics, including Amnesty International and the labour-supported Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA), were quick to note that, as constituted, Meyerhoffer's position lacks real and effective power.</p>
<p>The CNCA's Emily Dwyer points out that a fully-fledged ombudsperson would have the capacity to order companies under investigation to produce documents and provide testimony under oath. The Liberals' ombudsperson does not have that power. Her role is, essentially, advisory.</p>
<p><strong>Trudeau is still far more progressive than the Conservative alternative</strong></p>
<p>Having said all that, there are still fundamental and highly consequential differences between the current Trudeau Liberals and the Harper Conservatives they replaced -- or the Andrew Scheer Conservatives who seek to replace them.</p>
<p>A comment to this writer's <em>rabble.ca</em> piece of last week, <a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/jason-kenneys-discriminatory-and-unfair-refugee-rules-lie-ruins" target="_blank">which dealt with Canadian refugee policy</a>, and, in particular, its impact on European Roma refugee claimants, drives home that difference.</p>
<p>The article detailed how Liberal legislative changes and court decisions have undone many of the unfair and discriminatory measures Stephen Harper's immigration minister, Jason Kenney, brought in, under the guise of reforming the refugee system. </p>
<p>Kenney had a bee in his bonnet when it came to Roma asylum seekers from such countries as Hungary. He was not above using obvious dog-whistle rhetoric to connect with those in Canada who share Europe's centuries-old contempt for the people they call "Gypsies." Many Europeans still consider Gypsies (more appropriately, Roma) to be foreign invaders. The ancestors of today's Roma community arrived in Europe, from India, seven, eight or even nine hundred years ago.</p>
<p>Here is what one commenter, who identifies herself only as Jane Doe, had to say about that story:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Boy, so much lefties crap......As someone who lived in Central Europe for 40 years, witnessing Romas, your article is so defamatory and completely untrue. Roma (cigani) came to Europe in 14th century. Majority never assimilated. They could dance, sing (some) but you would have to glue them to the chair in the school to get educated or skilled. I was a teacher. There were a few exceptions. My son's music teacher was wonderful and he was ashamed of his own community. Majority Lifestyle was not working, stealing...Communists took care of them, splendidly, so there was not incentives to work. After 1990 regimes changed. Government asking them to work, contribute, pay taxes.....so they in masses claimed racism and apply for 'refugee' status in Canada. As far as I saw in documentary, many still live on welfare with their own community. Canada took over communists' welfare system. And it's more generous."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is but one example of the kind of bigotry that, in significant measure, drove Jason Kenney’s immigration and refugee policy.</p>
<p>Now, Andrew Scheer has picked up where Kenney left off. He seeks to incite panic and fear about what is, in effect, the trickle of refugees who come to Canada each year. (If you want to see what a flood of refugees looks like, consider Bangladesh, which, currently, hosts hundreds of thousands of Burmese Rohingya.)</p>
<p>The Conservative leader seems happy to play at being a dimpled and smiling Canadian version of Trump. At the same time, far too many Conservative politicians have made de facto common cause with the rising white nationalist movement in this country.</p>
<p>On immigration and refugees, the Trudeau government has not only set an entirely different tone from its predecessor, it has pursued very different and far more humane policies. These have had a significant impact on the lives of the thousands who seek refuge in this country each year. If Andrew Scheer were to take power in October it would mean many, many giant steps <em>backwards</em> for refugees and those who seek to assist them.</p>
<p>For progressive voters, that difference presents a huge conundrum.</p>
<p>It might be a different story had Trudeau carried out his oft-repeated pledge that the 2015 election would be the last one conducted under first-past-the-post. But, since the Liberal leader betrayed his commitment to put in place a more democratic and responsive electoral system, we are stuck with the awkward choices thrust on us by our current winner-take-all system. Our system, first-past-the-post, can easily award a majority of seats, and 100 per cent of the power, to a party that wins as little as 37 per cent of the vote.</p>
<p>And so, as those who care about the environment, workers' rights, Indigenous rights, the fate of refugees, and social justice start to consider their electoral choices, they might be experiencing considerable agony.</p>
<p>They might not want to reward a Liberal government that has been feckless, incoherent and, in some respects, cowardly. But the alternative posed by the second largest party is so loathsome they will want to weigh their options very carefully before casting their ballots.</p>
<p>The ugly truth is that this fall we could get a result not dissimilar to that of 2006. In that election, unforced errors and scandals, bred of an arrogant Liberal sense of entitlement, handed power to a Conservative leader whose core policies could never command support from anywhere near a majority of Canadians.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewscheer/44487727160/" target="_blank">Andrew Scheer/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:30:01 +0000rabble staff159516 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/trudeau-has-proven-himself-feckless-scheer-scary#commentsJason Kenney's discriminatory and unfair refugee rules lie in ruinshttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/jason-kenneys-discriminatory-and-unfair-refugee-rules-lie-ruins
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Karl Nerenberg</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/04/jason-kenneys-discriminatory-and-unfair-refugee-rules-lie-ruins"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/JasonKenney-865x440.jpg?itok=di1VpV3V" width="1180" height="600" alt="Then citizenship and immigration minister Jason Kenney at a 2012 press conference. Photo: Daily Xtra/Flickr" title="hen citizenship and immigration minister Jason Kenney at a 2012 press conference. Photo: Daily Xtra/Flickr" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Whatever the long-term impact of the SNC-Lavalin affair -- and it just might blow itself out over the next few months -- there are other highly consequential issues that are sure to play a big role in the coming federal election campaign.</p>
<p>One of those is climate change.</p>
<p>The federal Conservatives and their provincial allies are crystal clear on that one. They are opposed to the most effective, proven, market-based means of lowering greenhouse gas emissions: a price on carbon.</p>
<p>As for their own policies to combat what the latest scientific data describe as the rampaging global warming taking place in Canada -- Conservatives are in no hurry to share those with us. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer thinks all he has to do is mindlessly repeat the mantra that he will kill the carbon tax and lower prices at the pump. It's a tactic that worked for Ontario premier Doug Ford, after all.</p>
<p>We'll have more on the economics and science of climate change in the coming days.</p>
<p>For now, let's look at another contentious zone of political conflict: immigration and refugee policy.</p>
<p>Jason Kenney, current leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP) in Alberta and aspiring premier, made his first political bones as the Harper Conservative government's immigration minister.</p>
<p>Kenney's signature accomplishments in that role were to ostentatiously kill a low-cost federal program that funded refugee health care and bring in a major overhaul of the rules and regulations for refugees.</p>
<p>The latter included provisions that discriminated against asylum seekers who came to Canada by boat, or who came from countries a minister could arbitrarily and unilaterally designate as safe.</p>
<p>The current Liberal government rolled back a number of Kenney's most odious changes. It restored health care for refugee claimants, for instance. The courts have also done their part to undo many of the Kenney measures that defy human rights.</p>
<p>Most recently, the federal court deemed that Jason Kenney's signature safe designated country of origin (DCO) provision is unconstitutional. The case was brought by a group of Roma from Hungary who were seeking refugee status in Canada.</p>
<p><strong>Slandering members of a historically persecuted group </strong></p>
<p>Hungary was one of the first countries Jason Kenney designated to be safe, while he was immigration minister. When he did so, Kenney characterized Hungary as a model liberal democracy, and described the Hungarian Roma as bogus refugees, interested only in Canada's generous welfare payments.</p>
<p>Five or six years ago many of us were relatively unaware of the far-right, nationalist, authoritarian Viktor Orban government in Hungary. Today, we know much more about it. We know that Hungary's Orban has defied the European Union in many ways: he refused to accept even a single refugee from among the flood who entered Europe from Syria and other countries in the Middle East and Africa; he imposed limits on press freedom; he undermined the independent judiciary and he lavished official state honours on anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi leaders of the past.</p>
<p>Last September the European Parliament took the extraordinary step of voting to impose sanctions on Hungary for its backsliding on democracy.</p>
<p>The large Roma community of Hungary, numbering some 800,000, has been a principal victim of Orban's avowedly "illiberal" and ethnic nationalist policies. A good many hardline Hungarian nationalists do not consider Roma and Jews to be true, pure Hungarians, and over more than a decade they have made their lives miserable.</p>
<p>Hungarian Roma are frequently subject to right-wing gang violence -- ranging from fire bombings to murder -- to which authorities more often than not turn a blind eye. Their children are placed in de facto segregated classes in school, and they face major discriminatory hurdles in employment and housing.</p>
<p>Canada, with its multi-cultural identity, has seemed a beacon of hope to many Roma. But both the earlier Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments, and the Harper Conservative government considered the influx of Roma refugees to be an awkward and somewhat embarrassing matter.</p>
<p>When Canada's neutral, non-political process granted refugee status to thousands of Roma from Hungary and other central and east European countries, Canadian politicians worried about damaged relations with our friends and allies in Europe. For years, both Conservative and Liberal governments had been negotiating what is now the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union. They did not want what they considered to be a messy refugee problem to upset the delicately balanced applecart of the talks.</p>
<p>One way of keeping out Roma was to impose a visa requirement on countries from which the Roma were coming. Canada used that tactic with the Czech Republic, to some effect. But, given the large, well-established and influential Hungarian diaspora in Canada, a visa requirement would not work for Hungary.</p>
<p>Jason Kenney decided that the solution to the Roma "problem" was to make it extremely difficult for Roma to qualify as refugees once they came here. Designating Hungary as a safe country of origin and repeatedly characterizing Roma refugees as bogus and queue jumpers helped encourage the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to massively reject Roma asylum claims, at least for a while. The designated country of origin rules made it almost impossible for those rejected applicants to appeal, meaning they could be expeditiously removed. Kenney's goal was to deport as many Roma asylum seekers as possible, as quickly as possible, and thus discourage others from coming here.</p>
<p>It did not work out that way. Roma have continued to come. And, since the change of government from the refugee-phobic Conservatives to the more benign Liberals, the IRB has been granting refugee status to a high proportion of Hungarian Roma. Even worse for Kenney's signature policy, some of the Roma caught in the system he created took the government to court, arguing that the designated safe country of origin rule is contrary to Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.</p>
<p><strong>Designated country of origin rule is contrary to the charter </strong></p>
<p>On March 20, a federal court judge, Keith Boswell, ruled in favour of the Roma refugees. Justice Boswell ruled that the measure in the refugee law that discriminates against people from an arbitrary list of designated safe countries of origin runs counter to Charter of Right's guarantee of equal protection under the law for all, without discrimination based on race, ethnic origin, colour, or religion.</p>
<p>In his judgment, Justice Boswell makes frequent, and not very complimentary reference to Jason Kenney.</p>
<p>To cite one example, Justice Boswell quotes anthropologist Julianna Beaudoin, who studied Canadian media coverage of the Roma. In her research, Beaudoin showed how government officials tried to spread what Boswell calls the erroneous view that those who claim refugee status once they get to Canada are fraudulent queue jumpers.</p>
<p>Boswell relates, based on evidence Beaudouin provided, that "individuals have been contacted after reporting sympathetic stories about the Roma by various officials including then minister of citizenship and immigration, Jason Kenney." This was a case, Justice Boswell notes, of an attempt to "control the narrative and public information through intimidation."</p>
<p>In Justice Boswell's view, mainstream media were, in many cases, willing accomplices to the then immigration minister's campaign of slander against the Roma people. He quotes Beaudouin as saying "fear sells, and the media is quick to spread news on criminality, especially about Roma."</p>
<p>Jason Kenney, who hopes to become premier of Alberta on April 16, often harkens back proudly to his time as immigration minister.</p>
<p>He points to the record number of immigrants who came to Canada on his watch, and to his good relations with many ethno-cultural communities. But Kenney was not above appealing to ancient prejudices and hatreds when it suited his political purposes. Alberta voters might want to take note.</p>
<p>The current Trudeau Liberal government has taken a far more generous stance toward refugees than its predecessors, both Liberal and Conservative. Of late, however, Justin Trudeau and his team have been spooked by what they see as a growing backlash in the Canadian heartland against refugees -- a backlash actively fueled by Andrew Scheer and his Conservatives.</p>
<p>The Boswell decision achieved a change in the law the Liberals had, at one time, planned to accomplish through legislation. When the national mood on refugees seemed to sour, the Trudeau government quietly shelved that plan.</p>
<p><strong>What about the safe third country agreement with the U.S.?</strong></p>
<p>The designated country of origin provision, which created a two-tiered refugee system, is now dead, and will stay dead if the government chooses to forgo an appeal of the Boswell decision to the Supreme Court. There is still, however, the matter of another safe country rule, the safe third country agreement with the United States.</p>
<p>This safe country measure is not part of Canadian refugee legislation. It is an accord the Paul Martin Liberals signed with George W. Bush's U.S. administration in 2002, which states that refugee claimants from all over the world who arrive at Canadian border crossings from the U.S. can be refused admission and sent back south. These refugee claimants, the agreement stipulates, have already made it to a safe country and should not be allowed to shop around for a better option.</p>
<p>And so refugees from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, who do not believe they can get a fair shake in Donald Trump's America, have taken to entering Canada through unguarded back roads and farmers' fields.</p>
<p>Once on Canadian soil they cannot be automatically returned to the United States. International law, based on the Convention on Refugees to which Canada is a signatory, obliges the Canadian government to let them stay at least until it has fully considered their refugee claims. </p>
<p>The NDP takes the view that since the U.S. is now demonstrably not a safe country, Canada should abrogate the 2002 treaty. That would mean refugee claimants currently in the U.S. could enter at official border crossings, and not resort to often dangerous back routes.</p>
<p>The Trudeau government has shown no inclination to heed the NDP's advice. To the contrary, Trudeau's border security minister, former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, has mused about toughening the regulations that emanate from the safe third country accord. Blair wants to completely shut down the back-road option for refugee claimants.</p>
<p>So far, it is only a matter of musings; the government has not yet produced any new regulations or legislation to that effect.</p>
<p>There is still time for that, of course.</p>
<p>Before the summer recess, the Trudeau government will have to table a budget implementation bill, and we have seen how governments, both Liberal and Conservative, like to add all kinds of extraneous measures to those voluminous pieces of financial legislation. The measure that allows for a deferred prosecution agreement for companies accused of serious crimes (such as SNC-Lavalin) is only the most recent example of that legislative sleight of hand.</p>
<p>Stay tuned.</p>
<p><em>Karl Nerenberg has been a journalist and filmmaker for more than 25 years. He</em> <em>is rabble's politics reporter.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/xtracanada/6918742961/in/photolist-6cZzk7-6cZARy-6cVrma-WCwkbE-WPYytY-24b8tbG-27REpm1-udNq7o-zJ8HHN-ubAJzw-26VLiFc-yHd7xV-KiatC8-hnuGDv-6cVsUT-6cVqV4-6cVs4P-6cZy9S-6cVstK-6cZBjm-6cVrE2-6cZWjj-pAFQMH-6cVrua-distsk-6cZzbY-pT6xy6-6cVq8t-cphM49-pAJ4R2-6cVt5Z-6dG357-6dBTTt-6dBU1M-6cZBHW-6cVsmx-pTfogh-pTdVi1-8GwbX-pAJab1-oWo6JV-7rHyYt-oWjyKC-oWngBc-bxoneK-bxonyX-skmM52-ruiHCf-6cVtpM-5VeWju" target="_blank">Daily Xtra/Flickr</a></em></p>
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<div> </div>
</div></div></div>Fri, 05 Apr 2019 15:49:15 +0000rabble staff159396 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/04/jason-kenneys-discriminatory-and-unfair-refugee-rules-lie-ruins#commentsPundits keep scoffing, but progressive ideas keep winninghttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/03/pundits-keep-scoffing-progressive-ideas-keep-winning
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Alex Cosh</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news/2019/03/pundits-keep-scoffing-progressive-ideas-keep-winning"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/node-images/53048037_2076425645738338_7143221265464033280_o.jpg?itok=b7qDxdEq" width="1180" height="600" alt="Photo: Jagmeet Singh/Facebook" title="Photo: Jagmeet Singh/Facebook" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's victory in the Burnaby South byelection last week followed an increasingly familiar pattern in electoral politics.</p>
<p>A few months ago, all the talk in the mainstream media was of Singh's inept leadership and a looming disaster for the NDP. <em>Globe and Mail</em> columnist Gary Mason <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-many-travails-of-ndp-leader-jagmeet-singh/" target="_blank">called</a> Singh's leadership a "washout." In the <em>Ottawa Citizen</em>, Andrew McDougall, Stephen Harper's former communications director, <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/macdougall-things-are-looking-very-ugly-for-the-ndp-and-jagmeet-singh" target="_blank">chuckled</a>: "Singh features about as regularly as the third-choice goalie on a last-place NHL team" in conversations about the NDP. Liberal campaign strategist Omar Khan <a href="https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/khan-liberals-worst-nightmare-ndp-dumps-jagmeet-singh" target="_blank">said</a> Singh's leadership was "doomed in its infancy," and suggested, "Liberals are praying every night that the NDP doesn't dump him before the election." In the <em>National Post</em>, Rex Murphy <a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-jagmeet-singhs-natty-yet-ineffectual-failure-to-launch" target="_blank">described Singh</a> as "natty but ineffectual."</p>
<p>Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair, meanwhile, said it would be <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/war-of-words-current-previous-ndp-leaders-spar-over-state-of-the-party-1.4250560" target="_blank">"extremely difficult"</a> for Singh to stay on as leader if he lost in Burnaby.</p>
<p>During the byelection, Tory candidate Jay Shin's campaign <a href="https://www.burnabynow.com/news/save-the-ndp-by-voting-conservative-cheeky-flyer-tells-burnaby-south-residents-1.23644250" target="_blank">distributed</a> orange-branded leaflets urging voters to vote Conservative so as to "save the NDP" from Singh.</p>
<p>But despite months of ridicule, dismissiveness and doubt, Singh secured a win and increased the NDP's vote share in Burnaby South by almost <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4998663/ndp-leader-jagmeet-singh-wins-burnaby-south-byelection/" target="_blank">four points</a>. Former MP Kennedy Stewart won the riding by <a href="https://theprovince.com/news/local-news/burnaby-south-residents-head-to-the-polls-monday-to-vote-in-federal-by-election/wcm/4b8d53b0-4ae1-46aa-9883-a2b2b771533d" target="_blank">just over 500 votes</a> in the 2015 general election.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Liberal and Conservative parties saw their vote shares dip by eight and 4.5 points respectively.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/4999151/ndp-leader-jagmeet-singh-full-victory-speech-following-byelection-win" target="_blank">victory speech</a>, Singh said "people should be angry" at "a system that puts more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands."</p>
<p>The day after his election, he <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/the-early-edition" target="_blank">promised</a> to call out the Trudeau government's concern with "helping the wealthy and powerful, whether it's SNC-Lavalin or pharmaceutical companies, or oil and gas."</p>
<p>"We run campaigns in a way where we directly connect with the people, and our offer was better than the other parties," Singh added.</p>
<p><strong>An emerging trend</strong></p>
<p>The NDP leader's byelection victory in Burnaby follows an emerging trend: pundits scoff at and ridicule leaders on the left; then the left wins.</p>
<p>Similar scripts have played out in the U.K. and U.S. in recent years.</p>
<p>Throughout 2016, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was roundly dismissed as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-results-live-jeremy-corbyn-owen-smith-poll-incompetent-working-class-voters-a7326486.html" target="_blank">"out of touch" and "incompetent</a><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-results-live-jeremy-corbyn-owen-smith-poll-incompetent-working-class-voters-a7326486.html">."</a> Former Labour cabinet minister David Miliband <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37438120" target="_blank">called Corbyn</a> "unelectable" and "undesirable." <em>The Independent's</em> Tom Peck <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/how-jeremy-corbyn-destroyed-the-labour-party-in-365-days-a7238801.html" target="_blank">said</a> Corbyn would take Labour to "electoral oblivion." Commentator Nick Cohen <a href="https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/843177749980368897" target="_blank">said</a> Labour would be "slaughtered" at the ballot box. In <em>The Telegraph</em>, Toby Young arrogantly <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11680016/Why-Tories-should-join-Labour-and-back-Jeremy-Corbyn.html" target="_blank">suggested</a> conservatives should buy Labour memberships to vote for Corbyn during the party's leadership race, with the assumption the veteran socialist would be an electoral disaster for the party.</p>
<p>Then came the 2017 snap election. Up until the eleventh hour, everyone from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/30/tony-blair-labour-can-win-andrew-rawnsley-brexit-election" target="_blank">former primer minister Tony Blair</a> to author <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/09/jeremy-corbyns-critics-predicted-he-would-destroy-labour-they-were-radically-wrong/" target="_blank">J.K. Rowling</a> predicted a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/citi-bank-predicts-landslide-victory-of-uk-conservatives-eurosceptic-mps-to-rise.html" target="_blank">landslide win</a> for the Tories.</p>
<p>Instead, Conservative leader Theresa May lost her parliamentary majority, while Labour saw its <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-election-result-vote-share-increased-1945-clement-attlee-a7781706.html" target="_blank">biggest increase in votes</a> since 1945.</p>
<p>In the U.S., top Democrats regularly cast doubt on Democratic Socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's competence as an emerging leader of the left.</p>
<p>One patronizingly <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/11/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democrats-establisment-1093728" target="_blank">asked</a>: "Does she want to be an effective legislator or just continue being a Twitter star?" Oregon congressman Kurt Schrader suggested Ocasio-Cortez "doesn't understand" how Congress works yet. Former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-isnt-the-future-of-the-democratic-party-joe-lieberman" target="_blank">said</a>: "I certainly hope she's not the future and I don't believe she is."</p>
<p>But the data suggests otherwise. <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/425422-a-majority-of-americans-support-raising-the-top-tax-rate-to-70" target="_blank">A poll</a> published by The Hill and Harris X found 59 per cent of registered voters support Ocasio-Cortez's <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/4/18168431/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-70-percent" target="_blank">70 per cent top tax-rate proposal</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-a-popular-choice-for-president--even-though-shes-too-young-to-serve/2019/01/22/05cb590c-1e43-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.1678a47eab13" target="_blank">Another poll</a> found 74 per cent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters would vote Ocasio-Cortez for president if they could (she is currently too young to run). The congresswoman also enjoys <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2019/01/17/polling-shows-ocasio-cortezs-rising-fame/" target="_blank">higher name-recognition and favourability</a> than some Democratic 2020 presidential contenders.</p>
<p>Singh is rarely criticized for being too left-wing in the ways Corbyn and Ocasio-Cortez are, but Singh has shown, like Corbyn and Ocasio-Cortez, he can be a much more effective leader than his critics first predicted.</p>
<p>Organizer and editor Derrick O'Keefe <a href="https://twitter.com/derrickokeefe/status/1100257544512114689" target="_blank">tweeted</a> last week: "Singh hits right themes in his victory speech. Centrism and liberalism can't stop the rise of the far-right; only democratic socialism can."</p>
<p>"The NDP need to go left or go home this year," he <a href="https://twitter.com/derrickokeefe/status/1100258422002515970" target="_blank">added</a>.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-ndp-has-trouble-raising-cash-as-it-prepares-for-the-201/" target="_blank">fundraising challenges</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pollcast-ndp-2019-1.4991551" target="_blank">modest polling numbers</a>, the federal NDP has a steep mountain to climb ahead of the general election. But the result in Burnaby South shows naysaying from the pundit class is doing little to dampen the momentum of leftist ideas.</p>
<p>If Singh can harness the same kind of progressive energy stoked by Bernie Sanders, Corbyn and Ocasio-Cortez, there's reason to believe the NDP leader can prove pundits wrong again this fall.</p>
<p><em>Alex Cosh is a journalist and PhD student based in Powell River, B.C. His work has appeared on PressProgress, Left Foot Forward and in several local publications in B.C.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/jagmeetndp/photos/" target="_blank">Jagmeet Singh/Facebook</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 06 Mar 2019 13:41:39 +0000rabble staff158046 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/news/2019/03/pundits-keep-scoffing-progressive-ideas-keep-winning#comments